Golden Globe winner Martin Scorsese received the second boost in two days to his Oscar campaign when he was today (Jan 21) named among five nominees for the top Directors Guild of America (DGA) award, a near iron-clad barometer of Academy Award success. Fresh from winning his first Golden Globe for Gangs Of New York (Screen Daily Jan 20), Scorsese will go against Stephen Daldry for The Hours, Peter Jackson for The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, Rob Marshall for Chicago and Roman Polanski for The Pianist. The DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2002 will be handed out at the 55th Annual DGA Awards in Los Angeles on Mar 1.

The DGA award has proved itself to be a strong Academy Awards indicator; only five DGA winners since the body's inception in 1949 have not gone on to win the Best Director Academy Award. Last year Ron Howard won the DGA award for A Beautiful Mind and duly went on to take the Oscar. Scorsese has famously never won the statuette but must rank as a frontrunner following his first Golden Globe award and the DGA nomination. The veteran film-maker is already guaranteed of walking away with something from the DGA awards dinner after he was chosen as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.